Configuring browsing categories

I like the new functionality for configuring browsing categories very much.

But is it possible to add an entry for year and album on the music category ?

By the way it would be very nice if the sort criterias of submenues would be configurable.

Best regards
Samoth

Hello, new here, just discovered Serviio as I'm still looking for the perfect solution! I've come via Meedio, Synology DSM Media Server, and J. River MC (the latter is what I'm using at the moment), but really looking for something that can be installed on power-efficient, quiet and always-on NAS unit instead of a power-hungry windows PC. The main advantage of Meedio and JRMC over all other servers is the flexibility of creating custom browse trees, sort orders and filters from whatever metadata you want, instead of a standard Artist, Album, Genre menu. The major issue for me is that I need to use Album Artist (not Artist) and use two additional tags for defining certain categories of my collection.

So I support this request for a year/album category and configurable sort orders. But would go much further! For example, some people might want an album list sorted alphabetically, others might want them sorted by year. Especially when drilling down into an Artist - albums should be listed chronologically.

Could the browse categories be made completely user-definable, instead of switching on or off pre-defined ones? In other words, defining categories which have a multi-level drill-down structure. Each level should define a group-by tag and a sort-by tag, also an option to specify whether this level should be skipped if it only returns one item, and also a definition of where the artwork/thumbnail for this level should come from together with the caption. Sounds complicated! But JRMC is almost there...

An example of why it's desirable to specify where the image would come from: For actual media files, e.g. a track or a video, Serviio already has algorithms to determine the image, which will work fine. But what about the folder level? This will be useful for a DLNA controller/player that is able to graphically render a collection as a grid of icons or as imageflow, e.g. for a touchscreen device, or large icons for a TV interface. You might want to define icons for your Genres for example, so the Genre level would be specified as a pathname that holds all your genre images and the metadata tag that will be used to find the right image file for the level (your Rock icon would have the filename rock.jpg, so your pathname is /mydirectory/mediafiles/icons/genres/<genre>.jpg for example). Similarly, you might have a pretty icon for each of your artists. You might have other arbitrary categories that you want to define icons for.

Also to be able define the text that DLNA controllers might display as a caption below the icons, or that will be used if the Controller is unable to graphically render the list. You might be grouping and sorting by a SortArtist tag, for example, but the caption you want displaying is the actual Artist name. And the display of a track's name would depend on whether you were drilling down by an artist's album, so you just want "<tracknbr>. <trackname>" as the caption, but if coming to a track listing via a compilation album then you'd want "<tracknbr>. <trackname> - <artist>".

If there is a facility to define a level as an index (i.e. A-Z) before drilling down to the actual level, then maybe Serviio could generate its own icons consisting of a large character in a box.

And for each category, define a filter which will restrict the display of items in that view. For example, I might want to separate out compilation albums from actual artist albums if I want to drill down in a different way (artist albums are categorised as Album Artist and then Album sorted by Year, whereas compilation albums are Album sorted by Title) or I might want a separate category for soundtracks.

The slight issue is that you don't know what tags people are going to have populated in their collections, over many file types, in order to index them and provide for them. I can only think that the list of available tags is dynamically populated as a media scan takes place, or the user has to pre-define to Serviio what tags in what types of media files to look for.

Anyway, do you see where I'm going??!! There are many media servers out there, the differences between them occur in how flexible they are at cataloguing your collection.

[zip]

I hear you, but it's not an easy thing to implement at all. Not only it would need complicated UI, but also a lot of changes to the underlaying data request layer and services. ATM I'm going with a predefined set of categories, each representing a data drilling command(s). Obviously if you have ideas for additional categories or enhancing the current ones then ideas are always welcome.

Images for folders are not part of the UPnP/DLNA standard.

I think three of the biggest frustrations and oft-requested enhancements in the vast majority of media servers are as follows:

1. Album Artist. If the server only reads the track Artist then your Artist menu gets clogged up with hundreds of minor, contributing artists that are only in your collection simply because they appear on an obscure compilation album, and you would never really want to search for them explicitly. Also, albums by a specific artist get split if one or more tracks have a contributing artist that appears in the Artist tag.

2. DiskNumber/Part of Set/Volume. There are not many servers at all that can handle multi-volume/boxed sets. Although the uPNP spec says that DiskNumber is be a digit, it would actually be more useful to have it as a string so that you can name your volumes, e.g. "Original Album" and "Bonus Tracks" for example, or in a boxed set of world music where each CD is themed after a country, the DiskNumber/Part ofSet could say "Africa", "Austria", "Australia", etc. If there is no consideration for boxed sets, then you either have one album with dozens of tracks in it, or your main album menu is cluttered with each individual CD whereas you'd just want to see one entry for the entire boxed set.

3. Sorting albums (within a particular artist) by year rather than alphabetically.

Ideally, here are some basic views that I feel should be part of any DLNA server to cater for most peoples' tastes.

1. Album Artist ==> Album (sorted by Year) ==> PartofSet (skip this level if there is only one option) ==> Track (sorted by TrackNbr)
2. Artist ==> Album (sorted by either Title or Year) ==> Track
3. Album (sorted by Title) ==> PartofSet ==> Track
4. Genre ==> Album (sorted by Title) ==> PartofSet ==> Track
5. Genre ==> Album Artist ==> Album (sorted by Year) ==> PartofSet ==> Track

Using Album Artist means that you can easily find compilation albums by going the artist called Various Artists, and your main artist menu is uncluttered.

Artist and Album levels should also have an option to generate an A-Z index first before drilling down into the item.

As the OP has stated, many people also like to browse by Year or Decade as a top level item.

For me in particular, I also have a Grouping tag that always comes between the Album Artist and Album levels, and this contains values such as Studio Albums, 7" Singles, 12" Singles, CD Singles, Compilations, Live Albums. So that when I go into a particular artist, especially if I have LOADS of items by that artist, I can further break it down by the type of album rather than having them all mixed up together.

Images for folders are not part of the UPnP/DLNA standard.

True, but then again neither is transcoding to anything other than WAV and MP3, nor catering for the limitations of various clients by having separate profiles that supply customised things! Some media players (e.g. the WD TV Live) already understand images for folders because in graphical browse mode there is no text to say what the folder is. If the server doesn't supply an image then you just get a screenful of generic folder images with nothing to distinguish them until you roll over them.

[Cerberus]

I think three of the biggest frustrations and oft-requested enhancements in the vast majority of media servers are as follows:

1. Album Artist. If the server only reads the track Artist then your Artist menu gets clogged up with hundreds of minor, contributing artists that are only in your collection simply because they appear on an obscure compilation album, and you would never really want to search for them explicitly. Also, albums by a specific artist get split if one or more tracks have a contributing artist that appears in the Artist tag.

2. DiskNumber/Part of Set/Volume. There are not many servers at all that can handle multi-volume/boxed sets. Although the uPNP spec says that DiskNumber is be a digit, it would actually be more useful to have it as a string so that you can name your volumes, e.g. "Original Album" and "Bonus Tracks" for example, or in a boxed set of world music where each CD is themed after a country, the DiskNumber/Part ofSet could say "Africa", "Austria", "Australia", etc. If there is no consideration for boxed sets, then you either have one album with dozens of tracks in it, or your main album menu is cluttered with each individual CD whereas you'd just want to see one entry for the entire boxed set.

3. Sorting albums (within a particular artist) by year rather than alphabetically.

Ideally, here are some basic views that I feel should be part of any DLNA server to cater for most peoples' tastes.

1. Album Artist ==> Album (sorted by Year) ==> PartofSet (skip this level if there is only one option) ==> Track (sorted by TrackNbr)
2. Artist ==> Album (sorted by either Title or Year) ==> Track
3. Album (sorted by Title) ==> PartofSet ==> Track
4. Genre ==> Album (sorted by Title) ==> PartofSet ==> Track
5. Genre ==> Album Artist ==> Album (sorted by Year) ==> PartofSet ==> Track

Using Album Artist means that you can easily find compilation albums by going the artist called Various Artists, and your main artist menu is uncluttered.

Artist and Album levels should also have an option to generate an A-Z index first before drilling down into the item.

As the OP has stated, many people also like to browse by Year or Decade as a top level item.[/quote]

Totaly agree with that i would love to see this. But not a priority at the moment but would be nice in the future.

For me in particular, I also have a Grouping tag that always comes between the Album Artist and Album levels, and this contains values such as Studio Albums, 7" Singles, 12" Singles, CD Singles, Compilations, Live Albums. So that when I go into a particular artist, especially if I have LOADS of items by that artist, I can further break it down by the type of album rather than having them all mixed up together.{/quote]

Overkill in my opinion but maybe if that information is availible as part of the metadata. But again i think this should have a very very low priority.

Images for folders are not part of the UPnP/DLNA standard.
True, but then again neither is transcoding to anything other than WAV and MP3, nor catering for the limitations of various clients by having separate profiles that supply customised things! Some media players (e.g. the WD TV Live) already understand images for folders because in graphical browse mode there is no text to say what the folder is. If the server doesn't supply an image then you just get a screenful of generic folder images with nothing to distinguish them until you roll over them.

Not true transcoding to a wide range of file types IS part of DLNA and has always been and custom profiles have also been too as no 2 devices use the same client system

Folder images would be a nice idea but as ZIP has already stated there no way of doing this as part of the standard DLNA process BUT this may be a feature of the client?? but i dont know of any media servers currently on the market that support this..

J. River MC does! It's not completely comprehensive as yet but it is able to generate icons for Artist and Album levels by "stacking" a selection of images from the individual tracks, underneath that level, i.e. a main picture on the top with offset images underneath like a stack of paper. It also supplies its own generic folder icon for when it has no folder image, which is different from that generated by the client. There is also talk of implementing a user-supplied folder of images to handle the Genre scenario I've mentioned above. I don't know the technical details but I imagine it just consists of supplying a URL to an image for folder-level items as well as leaf-level items.

The only problem with JRMC is that it needs a Windows PC...

I'm not trying to be awkward, just trying to suggest ways in which Serviio can stand out from the crowd! As I really want a flexible server that can be put on a NAS, and I'm sure many people would love this too. There are many NAS units with built-in DLNA servers already but yes, they only offer the standard Artist/Album/Genre menus and there's nothing to choose between them. This is why all server support forums seem to be full of posts with requests for a more powerful indexing system.

The frustration that many people, who are serious about their collections, feel is that they spend ages tagging their music correctly and comprehensively for cataloguing purposes and then find that their media server mangles their collection and doesn't make use of the metadata! The way I look at it is, if you have a large physical CD and vinyl collection, how would you go about searching through it to find what you want? I would hazard a guess that you don't have them arranged by Album Title, nor by Genre, nor by Contributing Artist. But I do have them arranged by Album Artist, then chronologically, and I have separate boxes for albums and singles.

I guess it's a flaw of the tagging system itself which focusses on individual tracks, rather than seeing the whole thing as a collection of albums.

[Cerberus]

j river is a Media center AKA a media client and not a server that is how it can add that feature thats the difference

i was by no mean saying that you were awkward at all i agree with most of what you have said but in my opinion its not a vitally needed over other things like audio transcoding and compliency with more clients, so i fell it should have a low priority.

J River is a DLNA Server! You don't have to use its client bits at all. The server can be started as a service without starting the client application. It has similar configuration to Serviio, in that you define menus/views for transmission to the client, set transcoding options, and different profiles for different types of Renderer. See http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/DLNA. I'm currently using J River as a DLNA Server only, using PlugPlayer on an iPad as Controller, and a WD TV Live box as a Renderer.

[Cerberus]

J River is a DLNA Server! You don't have to use its client bits at all. The server can be started as a service without starting the client application. It has similar configuration to Serviio, in that you define menus/views for transmission to the client, set transcoding options, and different profiles for different types of Renderer. See http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/DLNA. I'm currently using J River as a DLNA Server only, using PlugPlayer on an iPad as Controller, and a WD TV Live box as a Renderer.

Ok doesnt say anything about media server on their main site and when i look at the wiki article you posted, i doesnt tell me alot about what it can do or even what devices it supports ( the supported link on there just saying devices that are dlna complient rather than ones that actualy work with it and support the feature you speak of ) no matter what the server does if the client ( renderer ) does not support it, it plain not going to work. Im not planning on paying for it to test more of it and from looking into plugplayer it would seem that it can use this function of jriver because it can not only play files from a media server but can be used to control a media renderer so that might explain why it works.

Remember serviio is free thanks to the kindness of ZIP so it can not truely be compared to PAY for software like is being discussed in this thread, i sure would not pay for jriver when i can use serviio and gain most of the same features.

[zip]

If you can browse for the folders in the River SW in Intel's AV Media Controller, you could right-click on one, go to properties and it should give you list of those, one of them being URL for a folder image. Can you post an example of that property?

Will have a go tonight.

In the meantime, take a look at http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=59936.msg404837#msg404837 from the 3rd post, which is confirmation that the J River DLNA Server provides artwork at the folder level, and clients that don't support the feature simply ignore it (it's only an XML element after all!). But note that it is an optional feature, turned on in J River's "DLNA Extra" property on the client device profile.

"With DLNAExtra as well as DLNA enabled, the artwork is presented with the maximum possible formats so it could be that the TV simply doesn't support the container artwork at all. The PS3 doesn't for example, but the WDTV does. It's completely up to the device." (but later it goes onto say, with a screenshot that proves it, that the PS3 has recognised folder artwork from another server (PMS?)

"The main icon will be the same regardless of the DLNAExtra setting.
The DLNAExtra setting provides the extra artwork resources (amongst other things) which are required for some devices to show album artwork.
Normally, when a device wants artwork, it requests it with a albumartURI filter which we always respond to."

The thread also contains some XML and URL info I think.

@Cerberus - PlugPlayer has nothing to do with it! It's a DLNA controller. At the moment it's only able to render the content directory as text (it doesn't support browsing by artwork) but that has no effect on whether or not other clients such as the WD TV Live support it when used as a standalone Player/DLNA Client rather than a Renderer that's being controlled by a Controller.

[Cerberus]

@Cerberus - PlugPlayer has nothing to do with it! It's a DLNA controller. At the moment it's only able to render the content directory as text (it doesn't support browsing by artwork) but that has no effect on whether or not other clients such as the WD TV Live support it when used as a standalone Player/DLNA Client rather than a Renderer that's being controlled by a Controller.

thats what i said.

no matter what the server does if the client ( renderer ) does not support it, it plain not going to work

[zip]

Reading that topic, it might be served as a folder 'resource' as well, not just as a property of it. Please check.

If you can browse for the folders in the River SW in Intel's AV Media Controller, you could right-click on one, go to properties and it should give you list of those, one of them being URL for a folder image. Can you post an example of that property?

I don't know exactly what info you need, but hopefully this will be helpful!

I've opened Intel Media Controller and in the tree on the left hand side there is an entry for J River under "Content Directories". Without actually expanding it, I right-click on that entry and choose Display properties. I assume this will be the entry for the server itself, i.e. what controllers will see as the server before actually selecting it.

There are 2 items int he resulting dialog - the first says "Properties" and the entries are as follows:

upnp:class - object.container
dc.title - Start
upnp:albumArtURI - http://192.168.1.101:52100/CArt/0.jpg
Restricted - True
Media Class - object:container
Object ID - 0
Server UDN - <a long hex string! - do you want it copied out?>
Searchable - True

The second item says Resource #1 and that displays:

contentURI - http://192.168.1.101:52100/CArt/0.jpg
protocolinfo - http-get:*:image/jpeg:DLNA.ORG_PN=HPEG_TN;DLNA.ORG_OP=00;DLNA.ORG_CI=1

If I put that URL into my browser I get JRiver's "empty folder" icon.


On expanding the original tree I get levels of "Music", "Photos", "Video" and "Playlists". Displaying the properties of "Music" gives:

upnp:class - object.container
dc.title - Music
upnp:albumArtURI - http://192.168.1.101:52100/CArt/1000.jpg
Restricted - True
Media Class - object:container
Object ID - 1000
Parent ID - 0
Searchable - True

Opening that URL also gives an "empty folder" icon.

Displaying the properties of "Video" gives:

upnp:class - object.container
dc.title - Video
upnp:albumArtURI - http://192.168.1.101:52100/CArt/3.jpg
Restricted - True
Media Class - object:container
Object ID - 3
Parent ID - 0
Searchable - True

Opening that URL gives a folder icon but with a Clapperboard graphic in it.

If I expand the content directory tree, through Music and then into my Artist menu and Display the properties of the entry for A-ha, I see the following:

upnp:class - object.container
dc.title - A-ha
upnp:albumArtURI - http://192.168.1.101:52100/CArt/1015.jpg
Restricted - True
Media Class - object:container
Object ID - 1015
Parent ID - 1002
Searchable - True

This URL gives an icon that is mainly the cover of one of my A-ha albums but shows other albums "stacked" beneath it, to show that this container cotnains several Albums.


All these icons are what are displayed on my WD TV Live box when browsing the server via DLNA. I don't know whether the images have been generated beforehand and stored in a cache somewhere when the media folders were originally scanned, and therefore the URL is path to a real image file or even an object in the database, or whether the URL is a dynamic script that generates the image ont the fly.

[zip]

thanks, so for the Video/Music or A-Ha folders, there is no Resource #1 entry?

Sorry, yes there is. The Resource #1 entries are exactly the same, except the contentUri changes in accordance with the upnp:albumArtURI entry.

I also made a slight typo in the protocolInfo string, it's actually:

http-get:*:image/jpeg:DLNA.ORG_PN=JPEG_TN;DLNA.ORG_OP=00;DLNA.ORG_CI=1

[zip]

I've created a ticket and will see what I can do: https://bitbucket.org/xnejp03/serviio/i ... or-folders

Thanks! I understand you have to get basics sorted out first, but this is one thing that could make Serviio really stand out from the rest! (together with customised meus of course ). There are loads of media centre type applications, all with pretty interfaces, stunning coverflow, 3D presentation of the media library etc, running on any form of device, but DLNA is lagging behind a bit. Why shouldn't these media centre applications be able to connect to DLNA libraries and treat them as though they were native? Why should stand-alone DLNA Controllers be limited to text mode? There are loads of DLNA servers, but which are able to present and publish the media library the best? J River itself, when used as a client MC application, has a 3D and coverflow type view, and it can certainly connect to DLNA libraries, but if connected to most other libraries all you'd get is a screenful of empty folder icons flowing across the screen!

I guess if it's as easy as simply putting an additional artwork XML element into the uPnP stream, you could default to an "empty folder" icon if there is nothing better to choose, then gradually enhance it.

For example, you could start at the very top level (the server entry itself) with a nice Serviio logo to stamp the brand!! Then, as J River does, serve icons for Music, Photo and Video levels.

For any other container level items I guess it could be as easy as sending the artwork for the first file that would be found underneath that level, the simple and obvious example is Album level. So why should other container level items be any different?

PS. in the ticket you've created, you've given the WDTV as an example of a client that supports container-level images. I think we can also say that the PS3 supports it (from the thread I linked to on the J River forums) and J River MC itself when used as a client.

[Cerberus]

nope PS3 does not support it at all and neither do samsung devices